Updates to VMDK partitions & disk resizing in VCSA 6.5

Similiar to the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 6.0 release, the new VCSA 6.5 is also composed of multiple virtual machine disks (VMDKs). Each VMDK maps to a specific function and OS partition within the VCSA. There are now a total of 12 VMDKs, two of which are new in vSphere 6.5: vSphere Update Manager (VUM) and Image Builder. The following table provides a break down of the VMDKs in VCSA 6.5 compared to VCSA 6.0:

Disk

6.0 Size

6.5 Size

Purpose

Mount Point

VMDK1

12GB

12GB

/ and Boot

/ and Boot

VMDK2

1.2GB

1.8GB

VCSA's RPM packages

N/A as it is not mounted after install

VMDK3

25GB

25GB

Swap

SWAP

VMDK4

25GB

25GB

Core

/storage/core

VMDK5

10GB

10GB

Log

/storage/log

VMDK6

10GB

10GB

DB

/storage/db

VMDK7

5GB

15GB

DBLog

/storage/dblog

VMDK8

10GB

10GB

SEAT (Stats Events and Tasks)

/storage/seat

VMDK9

1GB

1GB

Net Dumper

/storage/netdump

VMDK10

10GB

10GB

Auto Deploy

/storage/autodeploy

VMDK11

N/A (Previously InvSrvc 5GB)

10GB

Image Builder

/storage/imagebuilder

VMDK12

N/A

100GB

Update Manager

/storage/updatemgr

In addition to the VMDK/partition changes, there are a couple of enhancements when needing to increase disk capacity in the VCSA. Just like in VCSA 6.0, you will still be able to hot-extend any one of the VMDKs while the system is still running.

The first change is that instead of the old vpxd_servicecfg command which is used expand the logical volume(s) making the new storage capacity available the OS/application, it has been replaced with the following command: /usr/lib/applmgmt/support/scripts/autogrow.sh

The final difference is that in previous releases, you could only resize the Embedded VCSA or External VCSA node, but not the Platform Services Controller (PSC) node. In 6.5, this has changed and you can apply this method on any one of the VCSA nodes. Thanks to Blair for reminding me on this one!

Lets walk through an example of increasing the Net Dumper partition (VMDK9) and exercising this new VAMI API.

Step 1 - Login to VCSA using SSH to run a quick "df -h" to check the current size of your Net Dumper partition which by default will be 1GB as seen in the screenshot below.

Step 2 - Next, we will increase the VMDK to 5GB. In this example, I am using the vSphere Web Client but if you wanted to completely automate this process end-to-end, you can use the vSphere API/PowerCLI to perform this operation.

Step 3 - To quickly try out the new VAMI API, we will use the new vSphere API Explorer that is included in the VSCA 6.5. Simply open a web browser and enter the following URL: https://[VCSA-HOSTNAME]/apiexplorer Select the "appliance" API and then click on the login button and enter your vCenter Server credentials.

Step 4 - Scroll down to the POST /appliance/system/storage/resize operation and expand it. To call this API, just click on the "Try it out" button. If the operation completely successfully, you should see a 200 response as shown in the screenshot below.

Step 3 and 4 can also be called directly through PowerCLI using the new CIS cmdlets (Connect-CisServer & Get-CisService) which exposes the new VAMI APIs. Below is a quick snippet that performs the exact same operation:

I dug a bit deeper, and found the config file for StatsMonitor (/etc/vmware/statsmonitor/statsMonitor.xml) and it contains config for /storage/invsvc

…

invsvc
/storage/invsvc

Maybe this should have been removed from the vCSA65?

According to the 6.5U1 release notes it seems some alerts, like for invsvc, should have been removed..

:

Alarm definitions for deprecated services are still visible in the user interface

Alarm definitions for certain deprecated services have not been updated. As a result, you can still see alarm definitions for deprecated services in the vSphere user interface.

This issue is resolved in this release.
Alarms have been deprecated for the following services: ts, vws, vmware-syslog, invsvc
Alarms have been updated for the following services: content-library, vpxd-svcs

So would anyone recommend I create this directory or should I update the configuration?

We want to update when we update 1 on 6.5 but we have detected a full file system, / storage / log. When calling the API I get the error: Answer 403. From what I have seen is because of permissions problems.

Similar to some of the other comments here. TRY IT OUT did not work. It would be helpful to see what steps are required to get this functionality working, particularly because I was expecting the APIExplorer option to provide the code to execute but I noticed it is different. I received a 401 error on execution.
Thanks for the PowerCli code which worked a teat. I did receive a popup message “Object reference not set to an instance of an object”. Checking before and after changes, it did work though and I am now looking into 1) How to gt the try it out option working and 2) Why the popup notification. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

I am migrating vsphere vc 5.5 u3 vsphere 6.5 u1 using migration assistant my migration completed successfully but once migration completed my vcsa6.5 application consumed almist 1000 gb but we selected small while migration. Any way is there to reduce vmdk 1 and vmdk 2 to reduce.
which is consumed more than 440 and 438.. Pls suggest me.

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William Lam is a Staff Solutions Architect working in the VMware Cloud on AWS team within the Cloud Platform Business Unit (CPBU) at VMware. He focuses on Automation, Integration and Operation of the VMware Software Defined Datacenter (SDDC).